As Greg Gerding and his wife Lynne find out in the store below craft beers are usually much more flavorful and enjoyable than mass produced beers.  In fact, Greg and Lynne enjoy it so much that they go out and buy a Mr. Beer home brewing kit to make their own craft kit.

Argus-Press » News

It all started when he and his wife, Lynne, were vacationing in Grand Marais and visited the Lake Superior Brewing Company.

“Today we are beer connoisseurs. We were beer drinkers then,” Gerding said, adding he tried a pale ale and his wife had a cherry wheat.

“We sat there and we drank this beer and halfway through I looked over to (Lynne) and said, ‘This beer has got so much flavor!’ And she said, ‘I know. It’s unbelievable.’” Gerding said. “From that point on, we were sold and hooked on craft beer.”

And soon they had moved up the brewing ladder and started their own brewing club in their community.

So you see that you do not need to have anything other than desire to become a home brewer.  Just start out small and slow and you will eventually reach the level where you are making beer completely from scratch - if you want to.

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Table of contents for Your First Beer

1. Start Home Brewing
2. The Recipe
3. Introduction to the Tools
4. Save Yourself From a Brewing Disaster

Today I am going to teach you the best kept secret in home brewing.  This secret will give you the best possible chance to have a successful brew day and avoid many beginner mistakes.  Interested?  I thought so.

The Importance of Being Prepared

Success is one part skill, one part luck and eight parts preparation and in home brewing it is no different.  The difference between a successful brew day and a disastrous brew day is often in the preparation.

I can still recall my first brew day - I was running around frantically flipping through pages, pawing through cupboards and come to think of it I still haven’t found that packet of dry yeast that I swore I bought.  Although the day went horribly and I was stressed out through the whole brewing experience the beer I made turned out fairly good.

But if you are stressed when you are brewing you will never enjoy the hobby.  Looking back at the way I do things now to the way I do things then I found that the major difference was preparation.  I took the time to double-check my equipment and supplies the night before, and I wrote out a step by step brew plan on paper.

My Preparation Routine

I now approach every brew day the same way.  I double-check all my ingredients and equipment, set everything out the night before, and write out a brew plan before I start brewing.  This has saved me countless headaches as I realize, the day before trying to brew, that I forgot to pick up hops or yeast.

The following list walks you through my pre-brew routine.  Feel free to modify this to suit your needs as long as you take the time to properly prepare.

Three Days Before B-Day

• Verify that you have all your ingredients
• Verify that you have all the necessary gear and that it is cleaned
• Start your yeast starter if needed

The Day Before B-Day

• Re-read the recipe
• Walk through the b-day in your head
• Lay out your equipment and non-refrigerated ingredients
• Ensure you have enough water on hand
• Write out your brew plan

B-Day

• Review your plan
• Review your recipe

And that is all there is to it to preparing for a brew day.

Always Be Prepared

Subscribe to The Frosted Brew Weekly and never be caught unprepared again.  The Weekly is a weekly digest of new articles and downloads delivered straight to your inbox.  To subscribe, simply fill out the form below.

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Table of contents for Your First Beer

1. Start Home Brewing
2. The Recipe
3. Introduction to the Tools
4. Save Yourself From a Brewing Disaster

Welcome to the third installment of “Your First Beer”.  Today I am going to teach you about some of the tools we will be using and why we will be using them.  These tools will be the hydrometer, thermometer and the all important notebook.

The Hydrometer

The hydrometer is used to measure specific gravity of liquids as a comparison to pure water.  Pure water has a specific gravity (SG) of 1.000.  Sugar increases the SG of water.

By comparing the original gravity (OG) and final gravity (FG) we can tell how much alcohol our homemade beer has.  The original gravity measures the total sugars in the beer before the yeast converts it to alcohol.  By noting the difference between FG and OG we can calculate the alcohol content.

Home brewers have mixed opinions about how critical the hydrometer is to home brewing success.  Some home brewers like the thrill of throwing a bunch of ingredients together and seeing what comes out while other home brewers like to be as precise as possible in their approaches.

The Thermometer

Thermometers are, as you may already know, used to measure the temperatuer of different things.  As a beginning home brewers you will primarily be concerned with the temperature of your wort so you don’t pitch your yeast above 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

More advanced home brewers who do all-grain brewing have many more temperatures to be concerned about.  Mash temps, sparge temps, and strike temps are very critical to all-grain brewers but thankfully you can skip all that stuff.

A good beginner thermometer is a “floating thermometer”.  This thermometer is a long glass tube that has the thermometer part inside.  It is designed to float in liquids.  It takes two minutes to take an accurate reading using this kind of thermometer.

The Notebook

As a home brewer I keep three different notebooks: the log book, the recipe book and the recipe design book.

The Log Book

My log book contains notes on all my brewing sessions.  Good notes are invaluable in diagnosing problems in your brewing process and are key to reproducing good beers in the future.  You can keep your log book any way you would like whether its in a Word document, hard copy notebook or specialized software.

The Recipe Book

For my recipe book I have a 3-ring binder.  When I perfect a recipe and don’t want to make any more changes I type it up and print it out (my hand writing is horrible) and add it to the proper section in my three ring binder.  I have tabs that seperate my recipes into various beer styles such as pale ale, stout and porter.

The Recipe Design Book

This is an unruled book that I use to store notes and recipes in progress.  When I first brainstorm a recipe I will do all my calculations and notes in this book and then write up a temporary recipe.  I then brew with this recipe and record it in the log book.  If I am happy with the results I add it to the recipe book and if I am not happy I go back to the recipe design book and start tweaking it.

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Ingredients

• 8lbs Wheat Malt
• 1lb Cara-Pils/Dextrone
• 1lb Pale Malt (2-Row)
• 1 oz Hallertauer hops @ 4.80%
• Wyeast 1056 American Ale
• .5 oz Irish Moss

Vital Statistics

Original Gravity: 1.057
Final Gravity: 1.014
IBU: 13
SRM: 3.9
Alcohol by Volume:5.63%

Procedure

Mash the grains at 158 degrees using 1.25 quarts of water per grain.  Sparge at 170 degrees.

Boil the wort for one hour.  At the start of the boil add 1 oz of Cascade hops.  After 35 minutes add 1 oz of Hallertauer hops.  After 45 minutes, add Irish moss.

Cool wort to 70 degrees and transfer to the fermenter.  Pitch the yeast and seal.

Ferment for fourteen days.  Let rest for fourteen days and then bottle.  Let age in bottle for seven days.

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Table of contents for Your First Beer

1. Start Home Brewing
2. The Recipe
3. Introduction to the Tools
4. Save Yourself From a Brewing Disaster

The recipe we will be using during this “virtual workshop” is a blonde ale recipe known as Ruby’s Booby Blonde Ale.  The recipe is a simple extract recipe which will make learning the basics of brewing that much easier.  This article will explain how to read the recipe, what the various measurements mean, and give you a preview of what the finished beer should look like.

You can view the recipe here.

Extract vs. All-Grain Brewing

Extract brewing refers to using malt extracts (”pre-made worts”) to brew beer.  This allows you to skip the mashing and sparging of malted grains and go right to the boiling process.  It also is a much simpler way to brew.

All-Grain brewing refers to brewing with just malted grain.  Using this process you must mash and sparge the grains which is a very lengthy process.  Most all brewers start with extract brewing and some move on to all-grain brewing and some stay at extract brewing.

In between these two brewing formats you will also find brewing with specialty grains as well as partial mash brewing.  Brewing with specialty grains is basically making a “tea” out of malted grains before you add the malt extracts and hops.  A partial mash is where a portion of the fermentable sugar comes from a “mini-mash” (typically around 50%) and the rest is made up with malt extract.  Both of these subjects will be covered in further detail in future posts.

Blonde Ale

A good example of a blonde ale

Blonde ale beers are typically clear, crisp and dry.  Also known as golden ales, these beers are a golden straw color and have higher carbonation than other ales.  Blonde ales are a good gateway beer for people used to drinking light American lagers but want to start experimenting with other beer styles, such as pale ale or bock.

Some commercial examples are Goose Island Blonde and Red hook Blonde Ale.

The blonde ale beer is also an easy beer to make, however, if you scroch the malt extract it will show up really easily (because the beer is a lighter beer).

The following section with explain what the vital statistics in the recipe mean.

Understanding Vital Statistics

Beers are grouped into styles.  Which beers go into which styles is decided upon by what I call the vital statistics.  These statistics measure the bitterness, color and alcohol content of the beer.

International Bitterness Units (IBU)

International Bitterness Units measure the bitterness of a beer.  All beers have a certain level of bitterness to them.  If they didn’t the malt would make the beer too sweet to drink.

The most common bittering agent is the hops.  The strength of the bittering acids in the hop are measured as Alpha Acid Percentage.  This percentage changes every year and so you will usually find it marked on the hops package.

To give you a landmark in interpreting IBUs remember that an American lager is typically 5 IBUs and a blonde ale is roughly 15-30 IBUs.  There is a maximum threshold of 100 IBUs - anything higher than that you will not be able to tell the difference.

Standard Reference Method (SRM)

The SRM color system provides a scale to compare the various colors of different beers.  This scale is a good guideline but is not extremely precise.  Slight variations in color produce similar wavelengths and thus a brown ale and amber ale produce close to the same number but look totally different.

Home brewers measure the SRM of their beers with a color card.  They hold the card next to the beer and find the closet match.  While not perfect, this provides a good enough method.  Other home brewers just use SRM to get an idea of what their finished beer should look like and don’t bother to actually measure the end result.

An example of a beer color card

Specific Gravity (SG)

Specific gravity is a measure of the density of liquid as it compares to pure water.  Home brewers are most interested into two different SG readings: Original Gravity (OG) and Final Gravity (FG).

The OG reading tells how much gravity is being contributed by sugar.  Pure water has a SG of 1.000.  If your beer has an OG of 1.050 then you have 50 points of gravity coming from sugar in your beer.

The FG reading tells us how much sugar is left in the beer.  Most of my beers finish at around 1.010 SG.  By comparing the OG (1.050) and the FG (1.010) we can calculate the alcohol by weight measure.  We can also learn when fermentation is complete using FG readings.  If we receive the same FG reading three days in a row that means the yeast has finished converting sugar to alcohol.

Phew… this has been a lot of information to process.  Be sure to check back soon for the next article in the series “Introducing the Tools of the Trade”.

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Table of contents for Your First Beer

1. Start Home Brewing
2. The Recipe
3. Introduction to the Tools
4. Save Yourself From a Brewing Disaster

Welcome to the first post in the series “Your First Beer”.  This series of posts will walk you through your first batch of beer, start to finish.  We’ll start where most textbooks start (I know, I lose points for lack of creativity) and then we will walk through each step of the brewing process.

On the History of Home Brewing

Home brewing is essentialy the art of making your own beer on a small scale.  The processes are identical to those used by large scale commercial breweries so we shall begin our tale with Prohibition.  As we all know, Prohibition outlawed the brewing of all alcoholic beverages.

The man that legalized home brewing

However, home brewing wasn’t made legal until 1979 when President Jimmy Carter signed into law legislature that would allow, on a federal level, states to adopt their own laws regarding home brewing.  Most states legalized home brewing shortly after that law was passed but there are still some states, such as Alabama, where it is illegal to brew beer at home.

During Prohibition the small breweries that had presevered traditional European styles of beer had closed down, while the larger breweries survived by producing malt for non-alcoholic purposes.  After Prohibition women had become a target market for the large breweries.

This lead large breweries to brew a style of beer that would come to be known as American lager.  American lager has a very neutral taste and appeals to a wide varietry of people.  Examples of American lager today include Coors and Budweiser beers.

About the Home Brewing Process

Just like any other form of cooking, home brewing has a set process that you have to follow.  First, you make the wort (unfermented beer).  Second, you ferment the wort. Finally, you bottle and condition the beer.

Wort is made by boiling malt extract with hops.  Boiling the hops releases the alpha acids which create the bitterness and flavors contributed by the hops.  The more hops you use and the longer you boil them the more bitterness you will extract.

Fermentation is achieved by mixing the wort with yeast in a sealed container.  A fermentation lock (or air lock) allows pressue to escape without letting oxygen in.  This is important to prevent bacterial infections in your beer.

Lastly bottling and aging the beer allows it to do two things.  First, it allows the beer to carbonate.  Second, it allows the flavors to meld and blend into one unique flavor.  Beer that has not been aged long enough is referred to as “green beer”.  Most of the off flavors you will experience will be because of green beer.

About the Blog

I created this blog to give people who are interested in home brewing a place where they can further their knowledge about the craft and a place where they can discuss home brewing with fellow home brewers.  At this blog you will find articles about all aspects of home brewing, video demonstrations of techniques, DIY projects that you can do at home, and an ever-growing collection of recipes.

I also created a weekly digest newsletter that summarizes all the new articles that were published to the blog, interesting reader comments, as well as exclusive tips and tricks.  You can subscribe by entering your name and email address in the boxes to the right.  By subscribing you will also receive a copy of “Building a Home Brewery”, a small report that details all the equipment you will need to complete this walkthrough.

If you run into any problems just drop a comment on any of the articles here.  I regulary check the site for new comments and will respond to your question as soon as I can.

Good luck with your brewing endeavors!

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Ingredients

• 10lbs Pale Malt (2-Row)
• 1lb Crystal 60L
• 2 oz Cascade hops at 5.75% AAU
• Wyeast 1056 American Ale
• .5 oz Irish Moss

Vital Statistics

Original Gravity: 1.050
Final Gravity: 1.010
IBU: 33
SRM: 9.8
Alcohol by Volume: 6.84%

Procedure

Mash the grains at 155 degrees using 1.25 quarts of water per grain.  Sparge at 170 degrees.

Boil the wort for one hour.  At the start of the boil add 1 oz of Cascade hops.  After 30 minutes add .5 oz of Cascade hops.  After 45 minutes, add Irish moss. After 55 minutes add remaining Cascade hops.

Cool wort to 70 degrees and transfer to the fermenter.  Pitch the yeast and seal.

Ferment for seven days and transfer to a secondary fermenter.  Let rest for fourteen days and then bottle.  Let age in bottle for twenty-one days.

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Ingredients

• 6lbs Light Malt Extract Syrup
• 1lb Light Dry Malt Extract
• 1lb Rice Syrup
• 1oz Tettnanger hops @ 4.5% AAU
• Muntons Dry Ale Yeast

Vital Statistics

Original Gravity: 1.043
Final Gravity: 1.011
IBU: 1
SRM: 3
Alcohol by Volume: 4.10%

Procedure

Mix extacts and rice syrup with a half ounce of Tettnanger hops and boil for an hour.  At the 45 minute mark, mix in the last 1/2 ounce of Tettnanger hops.

Cool wort to 70 degrees with an ice bath.  During the ice bath, mix yeast with lukewarm water and let stand for 15 minutes.

Transfer wort to fermenter and top off to 5 gallon mark with distilled water at room temperature.  Whisk for five minutes to aerate, pour in yeast mixture, and whisk for an additional five minutes.  Seal fermenter, insert airlock and store at 68 degrees for two weeks before bottling.

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Requirements for Bacterial Growth

Bacteria grows exponentially in any medium that holds enough nutrients to continue feeding the cells. As the cells multiple, nutrients are depleted and the medium is then enriched with waste products. Once these happens, bacteria enters the death stage as cells begin to die.

Generally speaking bacteria require six factors in order to grow: food, acidity, temperature, time, oxygen and moisture. This means that unfermented homemade beer is a nearly perfect growth medium for bacteria.

Wort has a lot of sugars that serve as food for bacteria. The temperature is also perfect (between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit) and since yeast also requires oxygen to grow we intentionally make our wort oxygen rich.

Obviously the moisture is there as well. So what is saving us from an infection in every batch?

Foremost is our sanitation practices. People who make homemade beer are some of the most sanitary people I know. We spend hours making sure that all our work areas are clean and sanitized before beginning work on our prized beers.

Our second line of defense is the lowered pH found in homemade beer. This lowered ph means that the medium is too acidic for bacteria to survive. Also once the yeast starts multiplying it will consume all the oxygen leaving none for the bacteria to grow with.

Vulnerable Times

Knowing what we now know we can reasonably deduce that during wort cooling and bottling is when our beer is most susceptible to infection. If you use a secondary fermenter than moving the beer to the secondary is also a potential window for infection.

As you move beer you introduce small amounts of oxygen through absorption. Given that at this stage most of the yeast has settled out of the beer and is no longer actively consuming oxygen and bacterial infection could take hold.

However, the biggest danger is chilling the wort before moving it to the fermenter. The longer it takes to chill the wort the longer the beer stays in the proper temperature range for bacteria to take hold. To counter act this danger it is highly recommended that you use some sort of wort chiller.

Symptoms of Infection

So now that we know all we care to know about infections how can we tell if we have an infection? An infection will manifest in one of three ways: CO2 levels (gushers), smell or taste.

Since bacteria and wild yeast all produce different symptoms it would be nearly impossible to list them all here. The best way to diagnose an infection is to take a taste test and then search the web for more information.

Infected beer is not dangerous for humans - at worst, it will give you a bit of a stomach ache. Also it is very difficult to catch an infection if you follow the basic santitation guidelines below:

1. Clean all your equipment thoroughly. You can’t sanitize dirty equipment.
2. Follow the directions on the package when mixing your sanitizer. Some sanitizers work by reacting with water and if not mixed in the proper proportions then it will not work.
3. Always use a no-rinse sanitizer. Unless you have access to a municipal water supply that chlorinates their water your water will have bacteria in it. Using a no-rinse sanitizer means you do not risk re-infecting your sanitized gear.

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If you don’t take good notes here is what will happen: First, you will be reading a website or magazine and see some cool little tip, such as how to calculate efficiency (for all-grain brewers). You will want to apply this tip but since you brewed your last batch seven weeks ago you can’t remember what your original gravity was.

You will get frustrated that you didn’t keep good notes and swear to do it next time. However by the time next time rolls around you will have forgotten about this little episode and it will repeat itself all over again.

This article will discuss taking notes in the context of extract brewing. If you are an all-grain brewer you will want to add the following: mash temperature, mash time, sparge temp, sparge time, sparge method, volume of wort collected and specific gravity of the wort.

Methods for Taking Notes

When it comes to taking notes there are as many ways to take notes as there are ways to skin the proverbial cat. Which method you chose is entirely up to you - I can only describe what works for me and what the alternatives are.

There is also no “wrong” way to take notes. As long as the notes work for you, they are the right way to take notes.

The two most popular mediums are using pen and paper or computer software. While both mediums have their advantages and disadvantages the computer software may be more confusing then helpful if you are a beginning brewer.

When evaluating note taking methods it’s important to keep our purpose in mind. We are looking for a system to capture the important details of our brew so that we can recreate or refine the brew.

What to Record

When discussing what information to record it’s easy to ramble so if I start to ramble just smack me upside the head. Before we get into a full-blown discussion on what to capture it will be helpful to split the brewing process up into various components.

The components of most extract brews include the following:

1. Recipe Design
2. Steeping
3. Boiling
4. Cooling
5. Pitching

In the Recipe Design phase we want to capture the basics of the brew. I do this by writing the name of the recipe on the top of page. Underneath it I capture the ingredients - extracts, specialty grains, hops, yeast, etc…

Once I have those down I calculate the estimated original gravity (this is one area where computer software programs really shine) and note that down as well.

Before I leave this stage I also write a sentence or two about what I want this beer to be. For example, I recently did a stout recipe that had this for an objective:

“Brew a stout that is sweet with a strong roasted taste - sweetness can be achieved by mashing at higher temps for longer chain sugars”

By keeping this objective in mind it helped shape my decisions during the brew day - for example, adjusting mash temps or hop levels during brewing.

After this step is done you can move on to the Steeping phase. This phase is where we steep our grains in our brew kettle. During this phase you are going to want to notate what grains you steeped at what temperatures and for how long.

The next step is Boiling. During this step you are going to capture your hop and additive (such as Irish moss) additions - what ingredients at what time (notate in minutes remaining) and how much.

For example, in my stout recipe I used 1 oz of Hallertau hops (4.8% Alpha Acids). My notes shows this:

“1 oz Hallertau Hops at 45 minutes / 1/2 tsp Irish Moss at 15 minutes”

Once the boil is over you are moving into the Cooling phase. During this phase you are going to want to record how long it took to cool your wort and what temperature you cooled it down to. Also include a few sentences about the method you used.

After your wort is cooled you are ready to start pitching. First you will want to take a hydrometer reading and notate that as your original gravity. Second, drink the hydrometer sample and record your thoughts about the taste of the wort.

Once that is done, record what type of yeast you are using (dry, liquid, starter, etc…) and how much you are using.

There, you’re done. Yow have a full recipe that you can recreate and refine as you well. If you follow this advice every time you make homemade beer you will have a great wealth of homemade beer experience captured in your log book.

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